La Llegada de Robyn en Antigua

I drew this for my little sister in the front of her new moleskin. She's off to Antigua, Guatemala for the semester. This is a caricature of her arrival.

The Boulder Beautification Project Video

Check out how we managed to paint two giant boulders one solid colour. See the photos and original post here. 



The Boulder Beautification Project from shouldercat on Vimeo.

 I used this project to learn how to use Premiere Pro 6 and it's fucking awesome! I highly recommend ditching Final Pro 7 and moving on to the future! It was so much better already and I barely brushed the surface of it's capabilities.

The End of The World

Here are a couple of uncompleted projects I started last winter. I was saving posting anything about them until I brought them to completion but now is a very appropriate time to let them out since they are inspired by the end of the Mayan calender that is going to happen this Friday Dec. 21st. If I don't post them now maybe I never will (because the world will end). They have to do with all the red wing black birds that were falling dead out of the sky by the hundreds in different places around the world like Sweden and the US (look it up). Those who know me, know of my obsession with dead birds and the apocalypse. When I head about all these birds dying a.) I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about it before and that it wasn't headline news (only headline news makes it to my ears usually) and b.) it felt like confirmation to me that something crazy is going to happen.

This was a sketch for a mural I was supposed to do in Vancouver on a plywood construction wall. It fell through. 

I expanded upon the mural idea that never happened and made this image to screen print onto some tote bags that I sewed by hand (with a sewing machine). The print was a failure because the system I was using wasn't into how finely detailed my lines are. I had big plans for those tote bags, it was heart breaking. 

There were two dead birds on the rooftop outside my window. Uh oh. Upon closer examination I noticed there was a 3rd completely disintegrated bird carcass. I'm trying to figure out what it means. 

Maria

Maria was my friend in Grade 1 and 2 when my life was one big fairy tale at The Waldorf School. She moved out West at the end of Grade 2. After a post card on the road, I never heard from her again until the wonders of modern technology reunited us recently. Maria had an amazing capability of weaving fantastical stories that seemed completely truthful to a small child learning math and English through tales of goblins and fairies. I kind of still like to believe that it was all true, maybe it was.

She had a friend named Squirrel - who was a squirrel. Every day at lunch, she would elaborately tell me about him and how one day we would meet. Everyday I awaited my encounter with Squirrel, going as far as wearing my eurhythmy* slippers under my snow boots in case they fell off while I jumped down into Squirrel’s hollow tree. I never did get to meet Squirrel, but this is how I envisioned jumping down that hollow tree.

*A weird interpretative dance in which all Waldorf students must participate.

Maria told me that every spring the birds fly above her and shed their feathers forming her wings so that she could fly with them. She must have told me this in the playground sandbox. This is how I imagined it.

I finally got these paintings back from The China Cloud. They are my first attempt at using gouache paint. Every one whose paintings I like on the internet use gouache so I thought I'd try it out. The sun was setting as I finally took these pictures so they're not the best.

Old School

I was looking through some old photos and I found this drawing. It was my original idea sketch for what later became the last screen print I did at Concordia in 2010. It's crazy to see how much my drawing has improved, and even how much it improved in the two years between the original sketch and the final print.

2008

2010

BMan Junk

Look! It's a filler post! 

I'm currently maybe applying for an MFA and also going to Toronto for a month very soon, so I'm not really starting any new projects.

In Sept. I sent this to my friend Dan who lives in Norway right now. It just got there a couple of weeks ago so secrets out. At Burning Man this year I was thinking about how much he would love it so I started collecting all the most useless, shitty Burning Man paraphernalia junk for him. My favorite pieces are the pee funnel ads from the shitters, the necklace Annie gave me because it's so shitty, and a zip lock of playa dust that looks like cocaine. Naturally, I nerded out super hard and made a cute little drawn index of all the items.

East Side Culture Crawl Round 2

I had some stuff up at The China Cloud last weekend for the East Side Culture Crawl again. Here's this year's set up:

I put up these stencils in the front stairwell.

Last monkey man with a photo of the piece on the street.

I showed my prints from LA with photos of the original pieces on the street.

Tried selling the prints I put up last year again on that table.

New paintings I did about some very old childhood memories involving my friend Maria from Waldorf. Better photos and full story to come when I take the show down.

Show poster and original re-drawing. 

In the main room I had a cute little monitor with 5 videos on loop.

The Boulder Beautification Project

The Boulder Beautification Project is Evan Sabourin's little baby. He really pushed the whole things forward. We trekked up an old block on day off and gave these boulders a make over. It's the most action they've seen in millions of years. We're talking about geological time here. I bet it's the most fun and attention they ever had aside from seeing tree planters pop a couple of trees by them a few years ago.

THE BOULDERS

The green one was especially cool because it was actually exactly the same colour as the background and was nearly impossible to see from the road. We made a giant boulder that has existed for millions of years disappear! It was also fun doing the least illegal ''street art'' ever. Middle of nowhere art.

Then everyone went and painted their own (smaller) boulder:

Evan 

Blinky and Winky reincarnated onto boulder by me and Annie

Garrett Jones everybody

Annah Tierney Mackay

THE PROCESS 
 

I shot a short video of the whole process (until my made in China battery cut out) so stay tuned for that later.

Self Portrait

Howling at the Moon - Revamped

I'm going to be in the East End Culture Crawl again this weekend at the China Cloud. I was assigned making a poster advertising us so I tried to make my life easy for once by using an old drawing. But naturally I made things way harder by redrawing the whole thing. Took me all day. I'm really glad I did it though cuz it looks way better than the original.

 The poster.
(Culture Crawl locations are indicated by a yellow balloon, hence the balloon)

The original (revised)

The original original post.

Golden Wedding

Golden Wedding. My newest short film starring Jacqueline Boily. It was part of a short film festival last night in Vancouver. It's been a year and half in the making so I am very happy it is finally done! Most of it was filmed in about an hour and a half in May 2011 at the beginning of the tree planting season at a ranch we stayed at. You'll see what I mean: Golden Wedding from shouldercat on Vimeo.

This was the other video in the festival: Senyoretes. I'm going to post the updated version of it soon.

  https://vimeo.com/21220157

In Media Res: Short Film Festival!

I'm going to be in my first film festival tomorrow night! 

It's a short film festival for artists living or working in the Mount Pleasant area in Vancouver. 

Two of my videos will be screened:

Golden Wedding - My newest video that I just finished last week starring me and the wonderful Jacqueline Boily. I haven't ''officially'' released it on the internet so if you're in Vancouver you should come see it! (Otherwise I'm going to post it here Sat. )
Senyoretes - A short documentary shot on a regionally special day of Carnival where I ask cross dressing Catalan boys what their favorite part is about dressing like a woman.

Carbon Colosseum

The best abandoned house explorer/scavenger I know, took me to the burned down motel in Williams Lake this past June. It was unreal. Sort of like a time capsule, like the people covered in pyroclastic flows from Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii. But instead of casts of melted people there were perfectly preserved burned stereo systems and a fridge with identifiable food still inside. Part of it looked like the Colosseum. The motel had burned down sometime last February I believe. It was subsidized housing. Apparently the only one who died was a cat. I scavenged a helmet for biking. It had weird moldy ash covering the foam inside in a thin film. Amongst all the finds there were computer speakers, a jean jacket and a crazy Navaho print leather jacket. The back of the truck smelled like burned motel.

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Within a few minutes of entering we heard voices and things crashing about, the source: this very drunk man. He was one of the former inhabitants of the motel. I'd probably be drunk too if my life could be represented by a burned skeleton (ok probably not). He stumbled around the motel falling on shattered glass and giving us a free historical tour. He took us to his uncle's room, where apparently the fire had started.

 

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This is the shoulder cat that started it all.
This kid was walking around the St. Laurent street festival in Montreal at the end of August a million years ago (actually maybe 9 years ago), and impressed the hell out of me. His cat was just hanging out on his shoulder and he would feed it from there. Look how bad ass that cat looks! I've wanted one ever since.
Shoulder cat.